… In 1979, when Carmine Galante, the head of the Bonanno crime family, was killed, the photographer Hal Goldenberg hoofed it up onto a roof in Brooklyn to get a shot of the gangster’s cool corpse. “There’s Carmine,” he says with evident glee, in “Paper of Wreckage,” “with his cigar in his mouth and his eye blown out. I start making pictures”…
–Vinson Cunningham, Extra, Extra!; A love-hate relationship with the New York Post, New Yorker, 19May25
So months before Carmine got snuffed
after I got run off road — was almost killed
for daring as forsaken Community Health Center
Medical Director to demand that Board of Directors
(Gerardo’s unsuccessful getting enough votes to prevent
guns being brought into the room where we met) hire outside
accountancy to audit where missing funds were – when it became
apparent my phone had been tapped, a staff member named Sheila Ayo
who had roots in an East Coast mafia family offered to get a guy knows a guy
wears jeans frosted with grit plus paint to find/ debug my office, car as well as home.
Bottomline: post lengthy receivership trial at which you were considered to be “star witness”
brave Federal judge totally turned over Spanish-speaking CHC leadership, then Sarnatzky’s tasked
with representation new improved institution consisted of eight large clinics vital to well-being of poor
East San Jose personas in Washington D.C. before single most important human to determine future dinero.
Legendary Ted Kennedy kept me waiting an hour for our private audience while he finished up with what sounded
like young woman on other side of door. While powerful sweaty Senator made no bones about buttoning up his shirt
odd wet-behind-ears amateur lobbyist sighs in relief perhaps nobody notices novice’s feet…clogs steada fancy leather shoes?
ABOUT THE POET
Gerard Sarnat: Late-phase often graphic poet arrived in seventh decade, aphorist, humorist or sometimes meanderist; Gerard Sarnat’s a multiple Pushcart/Best of Net Award nominee. Activism Through Poetry: How Gerard Sarnat Uses Verse as a Form of Protest is a 2025 retrospective: https://culterateblog.wordpress.com/2025/02/20/activism-through-poetry-how-gerard-sarnat-uses-verse-as-a-form-of-protest/. His words have been widely published in four collections; by Rattle, London Arts-Based Research Centre, Israel Association of Writers in English, The Nature of Our Times/Poets For Science, Gravity of the Thing, Poetry Center of San Jose, Brooklyn Review, Tokyo Poetry Journal, Gargoyle, Deronda Review, New Delta Review, Buddhist Review, New York Times, Mount Saint Mary’s University/LA, Oberlin, St. John’s University, Northwestern, Yale, Pomona, Harvard, Missouri Baptist, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, Columbia, Grinnell, Johns Hopkins, NYU, Brown, North Dakota, CUNY, McMaster, Maine, British Columbia/Toronto/Chicago, Virginia and Alabama university presses — and more.
He’s a Harvard Medical School-trained physician, Stanford professor, healthcare CEO. Currently, he’s devoting energy and resources to dealing with climate justice, serving on Climate Action Now’s board. Sarnat’s belonged to the longest-running U.S. Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue Group. Gerry’s been married since 1969 and has three kids, six grandsons — and looks forward to future granddaughters. gerardsarnat.com
About the Author
